


Aftermath

by Aradeia



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Family, Forgiveness, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23867062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aradeia/pseuds/Aradeia
Summary: “Together,” Creon said. “Jocasta, Eteocles, Polyneices, Antigone, Haemon, Eurydice.” He took a deep breath. “And you and me. The only ones left.”Ismene looked at him. A week ago she would never have thought that after everything, out of everyone, she would be left with Creon to pick up the ashes. But here they were, alone in the aftermath together. Fate was a capricious god, but if it would take the whole world away, at least it had left them each other.Shortly after the deaths of Antigone, Haemon, and Eurydice, Creon and Ismene talk about what happened, what they've learned, and how to live in the aftermath of family tragedy.
Relationships: Antigone & Ismene daughter of Oedipus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Creon of Thebes & Antigone, Ismene daughter of Oedipus & Creon of Thebes (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Kudos: 3





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after reading Sophocles' Antigone. I was left wondering about Ismene, who disappears from the play after only two scenes. In her last scene, Ismene asks Antigone: "When you are gone what life can I desire?" to which Antigone cruelly replies: "Love Creon. He's your kinsman and your care" (lines 548-9, Wyckoff translation). 
> 
> What's left for Ismene at the end of the play? What's left for Creon? They are the sole survivors of their devastated family. All they have is each other.

Ismene looked at what was left of Creon. He sat slumped on a bench in the hallway, facing Thebes, but he wasn’t looking at it. His head was buried in his hands. He sat still as stone, so he probably wasn’t crying. At least he wasn’t now. Creon had cried earlier. Creon would cry later. Only exhaustion could stifle his deep heaving sobs. To think that she had feared this man once. It was only a few days ago she had told Antigone she was too afraid to break his godless law. Those days felt like whole lifetimes ago. Lifetimes that someone else had lived they were so distant. 

Ismene walked out into the hallway and placed her hands over the bannister. Thebes stood as still as Creon under the sunset.

“Have you come to curse me?” he said behind her. His voice was worn to a whisper and she couldn’t help but turn to look at him. He hadn’t raised his head from his hands.

She thought about telling him that she didn’t need to be near him to curse him, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “I haven’t.”

“Perhaps you already have,” he said to his hands. “If anyone has the right to curse me, it’s you.”

She hadn’t considered he might think like that, that he might want a curse from her. “I heard you cursed yourself plenty. What do you need me to curse you for?”

“The curse might land if you cast it,” he said. “The gods might pity you.”

“They’ve never pitied me before,” she snapped.

Creon sighed. “No. I suppose they haven’t. Not any of us.”

Ismene couldn’t argue with that. She moved to sit next to Creon on the bench. “I couldn’t curse you, Creon.”

“You should.”

Ismene closed her eyes briefly. He had never been particularly good at listening to other people. “Maybe. But I can’t. And I won’t.”

“Why not? I deserve it.”

“We’re cursed enough, the two of us.” Ismene looked out over Thebes as she said this. 

“In the aftermath,” he said, and Ismene turned to look at him, a little surprised, though she knew it wasn’t fair of her to feel that way.

“Yes.”

“That has always been your burden,” he said.

Ismene frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“Your whole life has been lived in the aftermath,” he said. “After Jocasta’s suicide, and Oedipus’ exile, and Antigone went with him. And then your brothers were quick to work another devastation. Where were you?”

Ismene considered him, his head still in his hands. That was irritating her more and more. If he was going to say all of this, then he’d better meet her eyes. “Not with you,” she said, and she hoped the words would sting.

Creon sighed at that. “Not with me. I’m sorry for that. I was deep in my own blindness then.”

“You were,” she said. “Everyone was. Antigone. It doesn’t matter now.”

“But it does. Antigone was right. I was wrong.”

They’d left the subject of Ismene, then. Well, Antigone always found a way to get herself center stage. “She wasn’t right. You weren’t wrong.” She thought about it. “Or maybe you were both right and you were both wrong.”

“Unriddle that, Ismene.”

She almost smiled then. He didn’t believe her. “You wanted what everyone wanted–except for Antigone, of course. You wanted peace for Thebes. Stability. I wanted that more than anything. Who could fault you for that?”

“But I was wrong about how to get it. Antigone was right about that.”

Ismene sighed. “She made herself look right, that’s for sure, wrapped up in the language of gods’ law and gods’ right. Who could argue with that? Antigone was good with words. A real rhetorician.”

Creon stayed silent and Ismene was glad of it because she couldn’t stop now that she had started. “You and Antigone were never arguing about  _ what _ was right. You were arguing about  _ who _ was right. And neither of you, with your egos, with your righteousness, were ever going to convince the other of that.”

“So you think Antigone didn’t really care about the gods’ law, after everything?”

Ismene snorted. “No, not at all.”

“What did she care about then?” 

“Fame,” Ismene said quickly. “More than anything, she wanted to make her name deathless.”

“You hate her?”

Ismene’s heart lept and she whipped her head to look at him. Her eyes widened as they met his. He had finally looked up. 

Ismene shook her head. “I miss her. More than anything.”

Creon stared at her, eyes red rimmed and underlined by deep blue bags. His beard was scruffy, untrimmed, and his greying hair was oily and tangled. She had never seen him like this before.  She realized then that he had never seen her like this before either.

“More than anything,” Creon said, nodding his head slowly. “Yes. More than anything. I understand that… now.” 

Creon opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. Ismene stayed quiet and let him sort out his words. “I didn’t, before,” Creon said. “I wanted something else.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t just peace?” Ismene asked.

Creon shrugged. “I said I wanted peace for Thebes. And I did. But I wanted to be the one to bring it.”

Ismene nodded. “Just like Antigone, then. She said she wanted to honor our brother, but what she really wanted was for everyone to know she had honored him.”

Creon laughed at that. It was a hollow sound, devoid of warmth. He was laughing at himself. “Just like Antigone,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s the chief irony.”

Ismene supposed it was. It was one of the ironies of their lives at least. “And if either one of you had yielded, you two would have spared us all so much grief,” Ismene said. This was the worst of it to her because it had always seemed so clear. 

Creon nodded his head, his hands between his knees. “Yes,” he said. “We were unyielding, she and I.”

They sat in silence, looking over at far away Thebes. The sun had sunk so low in the sky. Night would fall soon, but for now the sky was deep blue and purple, with a burst of fiery red on the horizon.

“Why didn’t you bury Polyneices?” Creon asked.

“I could ask you the same question,” Ismene said. She wanted him to know that she hadn’t forgotten what he’d done, that it hurt her still, that it always would. She waited a moment for Creon to understand that, and then she conceded. “But I suppose you’ve already answered why you didn’t.”

“It wasn’t for an honorable reason,” he said.

“No, it wasn’t,” she agreed. “I didn’t have a very honorable reason when I refused to bury Polyneices either.”

“You were afraid of me?” he asked, looking at her. 

“Well, yes. I was afraid,” she said. “Of you, of your laws, your punishments. Such fierce things, all of them. But that wasn’t all of it. I think there’s some honor in admitting you’re afraid.” Ismene looked at him. “I wanted what you said you wanted. I wanted peace, I wanted stability, I wanted it to end. I was willing to let Polyneices moulder if it meant it would all end.”

“But Antigone wasn’t.”

She sighed. Always back to Antigone. “No, of course Antigone wasn’t willing. Antigone never wanted it to end. Or, if it had to end, she didn’t want to live there, in the aftermath.”

“Can you blame her?” 

His question took her off guard and she turned her head to meet his eyes. “I… Of course I can’t. Who would want to live with this? But… she left me. She left me to live with this, the weight of her death, our brothers’ deaths, our father’s, our mother’s. She left me to live with it alone, and when I asked you to kill me with her, she’s the one who forbade it. She wouldn’t even allow me the mercy of death. The mercy of death with her, my sister, the only one who knows what it feels like to have your father be your brother. She wanted me to survive because she wanted me to suffer. Why did she do that to me? How could she do that to me? How?”

Ismene looked away because she had to cover her face to cry again. Ismene tried to recover herself, but she knew she wouldn’t manage it, because the worst question, the question that tortured her, was bursting in her heart. “You asked me if I hated her. I didn’t. I don’t. But, did she… did she hate me? They said she went to her grave–that when she went, she said she was friendless, like I wasn’t her friend. She said she was the last in our family, like I wasn’t… like I wasn’t her sister. Did she hate me? Did she die hating me?”

Creon reached for her and rubbed his hand over her back in a circle, slowly, like a father might. That only made her cry harder.

“Haemon tried to kill me, before he killed himself,” Creon said, and Ismene gasped. She looked at him with wide eyes. 

“No…” Ismene whispered. “Haemon… he was not violent, or rash–”

Creon nodded. “He wasn’t. He was a good boy. But he struck at me. He missed. Barely hit me.” Creon removed his arm from her shoulder and lifted up his sleeve. There was a long scratch over his upper arm, still fresh. “They were always close. I should’ve known he would never stand for it. I should’ve known he would hate me if I… Well. I made him hate me. I saw it in his eyes when he lunged, when me missed, when he… stabbed himself. My good boy…” Creon pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He started to shake, and then he was crying again.

Ismene did what he’d done for her and pressed her hand against his back. A little resentment churned in her stomach that he had heard her darkest fear and changed the topic, but she couldn’t just let him sob alone.

“Haemon loved you,” Ismene whispered. She knew this wouldn’t make him stop crying. “He always did. That’s why he… tried to talk to you. To talk you down.”

“But I wouldn’t listen,” he choked out. “I couldn’t hear him.” He took a deep breath. “And the things I said to him, you wouldn’t believe. I called him ‘wicked,’ I called him ‘poisoned,’ I called him ‘weak.’ And then, god help me, I said– I said I’d kill her in front of him. How could I say that, if I didn’t want to hurt him? And if I wanted to hurt him… he must have thought I hated him, that I wanted to torture him because I hated him.”

Ismene stared at him. She’d heard the turn he’d taken. 

“But I could never- _never_ - hate him, my boy. I was wrong, so wrong, and he thought…” Creon let out a shaky breath. “I don’t think Antigone hated you, Ismene. That is what I’m trying to say. And even if, in that moment, she… she was mad at you, or wanted to hurt you… I believe that she loved you, truly, under it all. And if she could have had more time… If I could have gotten there in time, if I could have backed down and just let her live… I think she would have seen what she did to you, and I think she would be sorry for it.” 

Ismene’s eyes were swimming. She moved closer to him on the bench so that their sides touched, her arm still around him, and her put his around her, and they wept together. 

Ismene put her head on his shaking shoulder and tried to breathe evenly. She had one more thing she had to say to him. She took a deep breath.

“We have to bury them,” she said. “All of them. Together. We’re the only ones left to do it.”

Creon nodded slowly. “Together,” he said. “Jocasta, Eteocles, Polyneices, Antigone, Haemon, Eurydice.” He took a deep breath. “And you and me. The only ones left.”

She looked at him. A week ago she would never have thought that after everything, out of everyone, she would be left with Creon to pick up the ashes. But here they were, alone in the aftermath together. Fate was a capricious god, but if it would take the whole world away, at least it had left them each other. 

“I’ll want to leave Thebes,” Creon said. “Once we bury them. There’s too much grief here.”

“That grief will follow you wherever you go.” Ismene knew this. She had seen her father near the end. 

Creon nodded his head. “Of course. But I can’t stay here, so near it all.”

Ismene understood this. “I will go with you.” Creon had said it best. There was nothing for her here, but there was nothing for her anywhere, and everywhere else was less stained with her beloved family’s blood. 

Creon looked at her, and then he laid his hand on hers. “Let’s start, then,” he said. She nodded.

Ismene and Creon left the hallway to bury their family together. Night fell over Thebes.


End file.
